Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: On Long Island, Governor Hochul Highlights First Statewide Moratorium on New Hyperscale Data Centers as Support Continues to Grow

Governor Kathy Hochul today held a roundtable with state, business and local leaders from Long Island to highlight her Executive Order that creates the nation's first moratorium on new hyperscale data centers, establishing the strongest standards for data center development and creating a blueprint to support localities. The Governor is temporarily pausing State environmental permits for up to one year in order to build a nation-leading regulatory framework that protects ratepayers, the environment, the energy grid and communities across the state.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

I want to thank all of you for joining us this beautiful morning on Long Island. I was here last week. I'll be here again, I think Friday. It's a very enticing place to come in the summer, as long as it's not raining. Seen a little bit of rain lately. And thank you to our great friend, Supervisor Richie Schaffer, for always making me feel welcome and making sure I'm aware of all the challenges that people in these communities are feeling on the ground and what the state can do to address them, so I appreciate that.

I'll be hearing from a number of people here today, so I want to get started soon, but I want to thank our two elected officials - a number of elected officials here. I want to thank Monica Martinez, our Senator, for her engagement in this issue, and thank her for all she does for us, as well as Assemblymember Kwani B. O'Pharrow, and you'll be hearing from both of them momentarily. I'll have them actually give some comments in a moment.

Also Assemblymember Steve Stern has joined us. Assemblymember Tommy John Schiavoni is here. [Matty Aracich] from the Nassau Suffolk Building Trades has joined us as well. So thank you, everybody. And then we'll be hearing from everybody.

I just want to give a few opening thoughts, which is about the AI data centers, which have consumed a lot of attention in the news lately. Locally, neighboring towns, as well as across the country, people are very concerned about this. And, this is a great challenge, but it's also a great opportunity. And that's how I always see when there's something that people say there's one way or another way of looking at it, I tend to find the right path through the middle. So what I wanted to do is address this challenge, talk about why we put in place a one-year moratorium, and during that time we're going to continue the work that we literally started earlier this year.

In my State of the State address, I specifically said that I believe that these huge consumers of power, these data centers, need to bring their own power to the site, or contribute a premium on what they're paying for the energy they're consuming, because they're consuming it in vast, vast, vast amounts. And so knowing that, I launched our Public Service Commission to start looking, over the next year, how we actually set up a separate rate structure for them, or what does bringing your own power look like? What are the opportunities there? So that's ongoing, and that is going to take the rest of the year, which is part of the argument on the moratorium.

But also we're getting flooded - I guess you call it flooding the zone - with 30 more applicants in the State of New York right now. And I will tell you, as I see local officials here - I'm a former local official - my initial default position is to defer to locals on these decisions, but seeing the scale that is coming in, and that localities do not have necessarily the time or the expertise and all the other things you have to do to now devote time and energy to try and negotiate with one of these mega companies about what benefits you should be able to derive for your residents if you want this. Do you want this? It is up to the localities to make that determination. That is, full stop. Nothing goes anywhere unless a locality wants it. But if a community wants to entertain it, how are they dealing with the water challenges and how much they're consuming? How are they dealing with the noise disruptions, which are rather considerable? How are they dealing with the energy usage and mitigating that as much as possible? And are you getting enough benefits?

There are communities across this country that are getting enormous sums of money. I saw South Bend, Indiana - a pretty little town where my husband went to college. They're getting $143 million of benefits. They're - in other parts of the country, they're building childcare centers, they're building roads, they're contributing to the grid. And I want to say in New York, we're going to help through Empire State Development, help localities have a framework of what's been done elsewhere. But also, if you want this to happen - again, your choice - this is what you should be asking for because I don't want to leave anything on the table for those who support this.

And there are communities that are just going to say, "We don't want the effect on our farmland. We don't want the effect on our water table. We don't want the effect on our communities." And so that is what we're giving everybody a little more breathing room instead of having this jammed down everybody right away and being threatened with lawsuits, et cetera. Just trying to help everybody out through this. So I also don't think it makes sense to be giving tax breaks. Our taxpayers pay a lot of money to be residents of the state, we understand that. Tax breaks should not be given to these large companies that are coming who want to take - take our resources, take our talent, take our land. If you want to do that, you should not be getting a tax benefit because we are the ones who should be somehow the beneficiaries of your desire to come here. A company can't just want to come to New York and say, "Our success is important to us." Everybody has to succeed in the process, and that is the equation that we're going through right now.

And when we get - when we're done with this, we'll have the strongest framework in America. That's why we're number one in terms of leading. But it's not just about being first, it's about being the first to get it right. And there's a difference. We will get it right. That's what my challenge is to my team, I have probably seven agencies dedicated to this right now from everybody you can think of. But also I also want to - I think about places where I had conversations in Buffalo, I had them in Albany. I wanted to come here. Given the knowledge of Long Island, the drinking water all comes from a single aquifer. That, that is an important dynamic, an important fact that must be considered here. And people understand in this community more than most, the connectivity between the land and the water and the vulnerability that a place like Long Island can have. And so I just wanted this group to give me more of your local flavor of what you think the impacts could be here.

And we're going to make sure we get it right. We've been spending a lot of time trying to protect the water quality here and the environment and our enormous bond act that I just got approved with the legislature, and I thank the legislators for their support for this. A lot of that money is going to come to Long Island, to protect our water, protect our resources. So I will give some more thoughts as we continue because it's more important that I listen, and I want to first open it up for quick reflections from our Senator and our Assemblymembers, Senator Martinez.